


you laugh like there’s hope in the story

by freefallvertigo



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst with a Hopeful Ending, Confessions of love, F/F, First Kiss, Mentioned River Song, and so dumb, lots of pining x, the tardis is the ultimate wingwoman, they’re so soft for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-10
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24100309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freefallvertigo/pseuds/freefallvertigo
Summary: ”Is it true, what you said? That I’m all you have left?”Deep in the mind of the TARDIS, the Doctor and Yaz are confronted with their own shared history and come face to face with a truth that’s impossible to ignore.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 22
Kudos: 131





	you laugh like there’s hope in the story

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Authenticsleeping](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Authenticsleeping/gifts).



> Happy Birthday Baileyyy ya melt 
> 
> Hope I did your prompt justice and if not then just pretend I did bc I worked fucking hard on this x
> 
> Title from Bones by Ben Howard

Through the wispy steam of sweet vanilla coffee, gargantuan pillars of glinting, cosmic dust gaped like teeth from the maw of a hungry deity. Leaning against the TARDIS’ doorframe, Yaz took a scalding sip from her mug and remarked at how each of the plumes looked a little like stalactites (if stalactites were to glow violent, radioactive hues of magenta and tropic-sea blue). Certainly, the stars scattered across the surrounding expanse of space looked a lot like gems embedded in the walls of an unmined cavern. She might like to reach out a hand and dislodge one of them, weigh it up in her palm, if only it wouldn’t diminish the view.

Feeling a pressure on her shoulder, Yaz turned her head. The Doctor had materialised beside her. She rested an elbow on Yaz as if she were an armrest, forever taking advantage of that minute height difference between them. Her friend’s awe-honeyed eyes rivalled even the celestial panorama before them, sun flecked and reverential as they were.

Yaz looked into her mug.

Sometimes, the thought, even the most awful things were easier to brave than the way the Doctor’s kind gaze fell over her then.

“Hiya. Like what you see?”

“Uh – “

“It’s the Whisperin’ Nebula we’re lookin’ out at this morning, Yaz. Know why it’s called that? I’ll tell you,” the Doctor ploughed on, not bothering to wait for Yaz to postulate or even shrug. “Y’see that formation of dust clouds over there? Well, if you squint and tilt your head just so, it kinda looks like a hand cupped around an ear. Like this - see.” To exemplify her point, the Doctor curled her hand around Yaz’s ear. When she spoke next, it was but a whisper breezing through the tunnel of her fingers. “Makes y’wonder what kinda secrets the universe is passing back and forth, eh?”

At the feeling of the Doctor’s warm breath grazing the shell of her ear, the small hairs at the back of Yaz’s neck stood to attention. She tried to conceal how affected she was. “Bet you the universe knows where the last of those biscuits went this mornin’,” she ribbed, brushing a revelatory crumb of sugar from the breast of the Doctor’s coat.

Childlike marvel gave way to a bashful smile and the Doctor backed away with a shrug. “Good luck prying the clues of that mystery from the clutches of the stars, Yaz.” With a wink, she twirled on the heels of her boots and bound towards the console.

Chuckling softly, Yaz let the TARDIS door close behind her as she followed suit. She watched with faint amusement as the Doctor danced around the console, face awash in the amber glow of the crystalline time rotor. The Doctor’s fingers skimmed over glowing panels; she adjusted sliders, toggled switches, and wound up an especially noisy crank. Her pupils flitted briefly towards Yaz, bright irises flashing with a familiar thrill that paired so well with the mischievous curl of her lip she’d perfected to an art.

“What you fancyin’ today then, Yaz? Whole of time and space – right here at our fingertips. What d’you think? It’s a good day for scuba diving, init? Few thousand lightyears that way,” said the Doctor, nodding her head over her shoulder, “There’s the Aquarium. That’s the name of the planet! Ninety nine percent ocean. Whole thriving, scaly underwater civilisation. People with gills! Atlantis ought to have been a better name but – hey. What do I know? Or! Maybe you’re feelin’ the tropic moons of Zi-Kohor. You’ve never met a tiger like a Moonborn, Yaz. Oh, let me tell you.”

Yaz couldn’t help but allow the Doctor’s unfettered giddiness to infect her, inhaling it like some airborne disease bred from every excitable syllable tumbling without filter from her lips. The Doctor skirted past her with a rustle of clothes and a hand – fleeting, gentle, missed sorely the moment it was reclaimed – squeezing her arm.

“S’long as nobody tries to harvest my appendix again, Doctor, I’m happy with anywhere,” claimed Yaz.

The Doctor pressed her lips into an apologetic wince. “Yeah, kinda forgot the human appendix was considered such a delicacy on Bon Dippity. It’s just got such a fun name, though, hasn’t it? Bon Dippity! Shame they’re a bunch of cannibals.” The Doctor shrugged as though it were a matter of little consequence and reached for an appendage much resembling a gear stick protruding from the console. “Speakin’ of anywhere, though – “

The moment the Doctor pulled the lever, the TARDIS lurched violently beneath them. Yaz’s empty coffee mug, which she’d set down rather thoughtlessly on the nearest panel, slid from the console and smashed into a dozen pieces at her feet. Warm amber became harsh crimson and an alarm shrilled from – well, frankly, Yaz couldn’t quite place the origin. It sounded as if the very particles in the air around them were all screaming in terrible unison. She winced, hands finding the lip of the console for balance as the TARDIS continued to shudder.

“Oi – what you throwin’ a tantrum for, now?” The Doctor tweaked a few dials and depressed a button. The siren stopped abruptly, leaving but a tinny ringing in Yaz’s ear, and a keyboard ejected from the panel, smacking the Doctor in the hip. “Watch it,” she scolded, swivelling the monitor around with one hand and rubbing her hip with the other. She squinted at the screen. “All right, mate. Tell me where it hurts.”

“Why do I have a feeling the tropic moons of Zi-Kohor aren’t gonna be on our agenda today?” quipped Yaz resignedly, loosening her grip on the console now that the tremors had ceased.

The Doctor didn’t offer a reply, keys clacking beneath her rapid fingers and screen dousing her face in blue light. “Doesn’t make sense,” she grumbled under her breath. “I ran a full system check of your temporal index just last week and it were in tip-top shape! It’s supposed to be self-maintaining. Why would it…”

Yaz came to stand behind the Doctor, peering over her shoulder at a screen full of indecipherable concentric symbols. “What’s a temporal index?” she asked.

Sighing, the Doctor took a step back and slipped her hands into her coat pockets. “Well, y’know the TARDIS is alive – in a sense – and like most alive things, she’s got a brain. Doesn’t look much like yours or mine, mind you. Anyway. The temporal index is a part of hers. Seems like the problem’s comin’ from the Echo Chamber. Where her memories are stored.” The Doctor scratched her chin, the line between her brows deep with contemplation. “Not been down there in a good while.”

“If it’s self-maintaining, doesn’t that mean it can fix itself?” wondered Yaz.

“Usually, it does.” The Doctor glanced up at the time rotor, wariness scribbled into the contortions of her face. “Y’sure there’s no way to fix this one remotely?”

The TARDIS warbled the negative.

It struck Yaz as curious, the way the Doctor’s entire demeanour alluded to a kind of reluctance she’d never typically display at the prospect of mending the mechanics of her beloved ship. Sometimes, it was a chore even to entreat the Doctor away from the welding mask and solder irons long enough for her to indulge in something so crucial as a cup of tea or a mid-morning fry up. Yaz was sure the Doctor must have spent the better part of her life on repairs and upgrades. How she loved to tend to the TARDIS.

Yaz would have been lying to say she hadn’t, on rare and embarrassing occasions, succumbed to quietly sulking her jealousy. If the Doctor paid half as much attention to Yaz as she did to her ship, maybe she’d already have noticed the way Yaz looked at her. Pined over her. Ached for her.

“Right, well, sorry Yaz – looks like we’ll have to put our adventurin’ on hold for a bit. Can’t risk takin’ the TARDIS anywhere with a wonky brain. Could well end up at the heart of an active super volcano. Wouldn’t be my first time. Wouldn’t even be my fifty third,” confessed the Doctor, her lamentations missing the usual lustre that made them more amusing than concerning. “Y’can keep yourself busy today, can’t you? Oh, I’ve just had a 6D screen installed in the cinema! Now, that’ll keep you entertained. Just be wary of anything that flies out of the screen. The shields are there for a reason.”

“Thrillin’ as that sounds, Doctor… can’t I help you instead?” inquired Yaz. The idea of spending the day alone didn’t sit right with her; not when the Doctor was right there. She’d only spend the whole day thinking of her anyway. “Y’did say you were gonna start letting me give a helping hand. Feel pretty useless ‘round here sometimes.”

“I said I’d show you some of the basics. The brain of the most complex time ship in the universe isn’t exactly basic, Yaz. And anyway, you’re not useless!” assured the Doctor. “In all my lives, I’ve never met anyone who makes as brilliant a cuppa as you. And don’t even get me started on your shoulder rubs. Magic fingers, you have, Yasmin Khan. Anyone ever tell you that?”

Heat suffused Yaz’s cheeks. She had to wonder how a person so purportedly ancient could still retain such childish naivety, or if at times it was simply an act. Whatever the case, Yaz often found herself blushing at even the most innocent of the Doctor’s remarks. “Um, well, maybe I can put ‘em to better use helpin’ you? I could even just watch. Keep you company.”

“Ah, you’d be bored to tears. Don’t worry, I can manage,” insisted the Doctor, frustratingly oblivious to Yaz’s blatant attempts to come up with any reason for the two of them to spend time together. Again, the TARDIS warbled her dissent. The Doctor shot her a look. “Oh, don’t you get involved. I’m more than capable of – “

The ground underfoot trembled. Reflexively, Yaz reached for the Doctor’s arm for purchase, but it seemed the TARDIS was just making a point. The Doctor rolled her eyes and then set them on Yaz, who arched a prompting brow.

“So?”

“Looks like I’m outnumbered,” she relented, gaze flickering over Yaz’s hand just long enough for her to remember to release her hold on the Doctor. “We best gear up, then. This might take a while.”

///

An hour later, after fuelling up on caffeine and rummaging around through the Doctor’s endless stores of bizarre, incongruous flotsam and jetsam for the appropriate equipment, they arrived at the Echo Chamber. Yaz didn’t think she’d ever ventured so deep into the labyrinthine tunnels of the TARDIS, and only thanked that she was with the Doctor. No doubt it would take a lifetime to navigate her way back to familiar territory otherwise.

The Doctor brought them to a stop outside a heavy wooden door; every inch of it inscribed with more of those concentric glyphs Yaz had seen on the monitor earlier. Gallifreyan, she presumed. The Doctor once told her it was the only language the TARDIS couldn’t translate.

Once or twice, Yaz had overheard the Doctor mumbling to herself in a tongue so purely alien Yaz hadn’t known how to describe it except to say that it had absolutely enchanted her. It was soft, musical, distinct - and completely inimitable. In daydreams, Yaz imagined the Doctor whispering sweet nothings to her in her native tongue and the mere notion sent shivers running up and down her spine.

The inscriptions were embossed in gold; they glinted in the reflection of the Doctor’s clear lenses. Both she and Yaz were wearing a pair of what looked, to Yaz, like normal reading glasses (if a little retro). The Doctor had explained that the glasses would protect their eyes from the condensed Artron energy in the chamber, which was so abundant as to be seen with the naked eye.

“You all right?” asked Yaz, noticing the Doctor clenching her hand at her side. In her other, she held a device that looked like something a child might draw up after being asked to design a generic sci-fi gadget. It even had a little satellite dish on top, several blips on the radar beeping as it rotated.

“Me? Dandy! As I said, I’ve not been down here in a while,” excused the Doctor. “Just – just do your best to stick close to me, once we’re in there. And don’t touch anything. Not unless I tell you to. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Brill.” The Doctor took a breath. “Well. Let’s get a shift on, then.”

After pressing her palm flat against a gelatinous amber pad in the wall, the door groaned open, dragging backwards across the floor in a torturously slow sweep. Gold hinges squealed in a manner that made Yaz wonder just how long it had really been since the Doctor made her last journey down here. And why, now, was she clearly so averse to it? Catching her off guard, the Doctor took Yaz’s hand. She wasn’t given time enough to feel too much about the calloused fingers slotting perfectly between the ridges of her knuckles before the Doctor took a step forward.

Together, they crossed the threshold.

Almost as soon as they did, Yaz’s head tipped back and she went wide-eyed with wonder. Whatever she had been preparing herself for, this wasn’t it.

Briefly, Yaz was reminded of giant, mutant spiders and the tell-tale webs they left behind. It was a little like that – and it was nothing like that. Slung from every corner of the impossibly vast chamber were pulsing, gossamer threads which spanned sometimes hundreds of feet or else disappeared into the further reaches, too far for the human eye to discern.

Each of the threads were luminous white, but the white was imperfect. Yaz noticed ripples of colour coursing along them at light speed; followed one such current up and up and up until it disappeared into the vast, disquieting darkness overhead where the webbing became sparser and more branched out. The room looked to go on forever in all directions. Closer to the ground, the gauzy lattices were far more concentrated. Yaz could pick out tunnel-like paths winding through them; illuminated in their glow.

The Echo Chamber was aptly named. Tilting her head, Yaz listened and heard the flux of faint, unintelligible whispers like some ancient song she was never meant to understand. If the way the Doctor’s eyelids fluttered closed was anything to go by, this was not the case for her.

Yaz wondered what she could hear.

Thousands of voices – all of them known to her. Calling to her. Dragging her, unwilling, back through the unforgiving chasm of her own painful, joyous, colourful past. In a sense, this place was a graveyard – a burial ground for the disembodied voices (memories? Minds?) of those long since lost to the Doctor. Yaz shivered.

“Welcome to the cortex of the TARDIS, Yaz. Part of it, anyway,” the Doctor said tightly, giving Yaz’s hand a squeeze that may have been more for her own benefit.

“It’s incredible,” breathed Yaz, opting not to address the goose bumps running up and down her arms or how intrinsically haunted she felt. “So, if this is part of the brain then - these webs – they must be like the TARDIS’ neurons, yeah?”

“Ten points to Yasmin Khan,” awarded the Doctor without gusto. “It’s the Artron energy that gives ‘em the glow. Lots brighter without these handy specs, so try not to let ‘em slip off your nose, eh?”

Yaz pushed her glasses further up her nose; an unthinking reaction to the Doctor’s warning. “This place is bloody enormous; how we gonna know where the fault is?”

“Faults. Plural,” corrected the Doctor grimly, glancing at the gadget in her hand. “Not to worry, Yaz. My cerebral anomaly detector’s gonna do most of the leg work for us. Hopefully. Pretty sure I’ve got it on the right settings, now. Last time I used this thing I modified it to find all me odd socks. Can’t see why my odd socks would’ve ended up down ‘ere but they do have a funny habit, don’t they? C’mon. With me.”

The Doctor tugged Yaz’s hand and led her towards the makeshift tunnels weaving through the web of neurons. They were careful not to touch any of them, occasionally needing to duck their heads or artfully sidestep around certain offshoots. The deeper they journeyed into the chamber, the louder the whispers grew – without actually becoming any clearer in sense or meaning. The entire place pulsed with life, with death, with irrefutable proof that the Doctor had not in fact been slipping past the fringes of sanity whenever she’d engaged in conversation or debate with her TARDS in the past. The Echo Chamber was nothing if not a monument to sentience.

A solid five minutes of walking later, they located the first of the damages. One of the neurons was lying limp and void of colour on the ground. The Doctor lifted it with her finger and followed it all the way to the detached end. Once located, she tied it around Yaz’s finger.

“What am I meant to do with this?” asked Yaz, wriggling her pinkie.

“You? Nothin’. Just keep it safe. It’s come loose from its transmitter,” explained the Doctor, leading them both along a particularly narrow, winding pathway. The neuron trailed behind Yaz. “Which, if memory serves, should be right around… here. Somewhere.”

They came to a stop. Yaz glanced around, unable to pick out anything about their immediate surroundings which differed from the rest of the chamber they’d seen thus far. She was on the cusp of saying just as much when the Doctor released her hand in favour of withdrawing the sonic from her inside pocket. Extending a protective arm across Yaz’s chest, she pointed the sonic skyward. As it buzzed, a subsequent noise like the grinding of rusty metal sounded above their heads and moments later a metal ladder slammed hazardously into the ground mere inches from their feet. Craning her neck, Yaz peered up, struggling to make out the top of the ladder. It disappeared somewhere in the void beyond the webbing.

“Hope you’ve got your climbin’ boots on, Yaz,” quipped the Doctor.

“How tall exactly is this thing?” queried Yaz, giving the lowest rung an experimental prod with the toe of her shoe. The entire ladder wobbled. Less than reassuring.

“Eh, dunno the precise length. I mean, I do, but I feel it’s probably better if _you_ don’t,” the Doctor said, slipping the cerebral anomaly detector into her coat pocket. “S’pose it’s a good thing y’keep so fit.”

Yaz raised an eyebrow and wondered if the Doctor spent a lot of time noticing how fit Yaz was. If she’d meant anything by the comment, she didn’t let on. Instead, she gestured towards the ladder with a sweep of her arm. Huffing her cheeks out with one last sceptical glance at the ceiling – rather, where she imagined the ceiling to be – Yaz shook off her doubts and set about climbing the ladder.

It juddered tremendously beneath the weight of both she and the Doctor. The further Yaz climbed, the worse her fears at falling became. She wasn’t typically afraid of heights, but this was a _long_ ascent. She kept telling herself not to look down but it was like placing a bone in front of a dog and telling it not to eat it. Eventually, instinct was always going to take the cake.

Only, once she braved a peek over her shoulder, her eyes landed not on the ground but on the Doctor. Seemed the Doctor’s eyes had found their own bone to latch on to. She noticed Yaz watching and tore her gaze abruptly away, fixing them instead on the rungs at hand.

“Enjoyin’ the view, are you?” teased Yaz.

“I – what? No, I – I were just makin’ sure you’re doin’ all right. Don’t want you dropping that neuron, is all.” The tops of the Doctor’s ears burned bright crimson.

Yaz had only been joking, but the Doctor’s quick leap to the defensive gave her pause. Had the Doctor _actually_ been checking her out? Turning away, Yaz spent the rest of the climb fretting not about the altitude or the rickety ladder, but another matter entirely (a matter that apparently took precedence over the very real possibility that one wrong move might well send her plummeting to her death).

Yaz’s arms were aching by the time she reached the top of the ladder. It led them through a hatch up onto a circular platform suspended way above the ground, no more than ten metres in diameter. The platform was domed by a thicket of neurons; at the centre of the coved chamber was the transmitter. Yaz presumed it was the transmitter, at any rate. To her, it looked more like some kind of huge spinning wheel forged from crystal. What must have been thousands of neurons were coiled around the spindle and the wheel was in a constant state of rotation, neurons shooting off like yarn through microscopic gaps in the webbed walls. In here, at least, the whispers fell silent.

Yaz offered her hand to help the Doctor up the rest of the way. Once they were both on their feet, they manoeuvred their way through the offshoots carefully – like spies navigating lasers in some cheesy action movie, bar the acrobatics – until they reached the transmitter.

“All right, hop on that stool for me, Yaz, and hand me the neuron,” said the Doctor, nodding her head towards a small chair in front of the wheel which very much resembled a bike seat. After unravelling the neuron and handing it over to the Doctor, Yaz took a seat. The Doctor examined the spindle closely. “Okay, see that pedal by your feet? When I say now, press down on it with your foot. But only for two seconds. If you do it any longer than that, y’could trigger a partial mental breakdown. And then we really will be down here forever.”

“No pressure then.”

“Ah, I have every faith in you, Yaz!” The Doctor patted Yaz’s knee. “Ready?”

Yaz lifted her foot above the pedal. “Ready.”

The Doctor watched the wheel spin, pupils following it round and round and round, neuron poised in her hand. She stayed like that for a while. Yaz began to wonder if she’d got lost in some kind of trance, but then, “Now!”

Yaz hit the pedal. The wheel came grinding to a stop and the Doctor was fast to react; she looped the neuron around the circumference and weaved the end around the spindle, and the neuron began to glow the second Yaz lifted her foot. The wheel picked up its pace again; in a heartbeat it was rotating just as rapidly as before. The rest of the neuron that had been dragging behind them shot up from the ladder, wound around the wheel, and then shot back out through the dome.

Yaz was about to exclaim her glee when it happened.

The neuron they’d affixed began to shine electric blue, and then the rest of the neurons surrounding them followed suit. Yaz looked to the Doctor with a question making its way up her throat but she didn’t get to voice it before finding the Doctor’s frankly terrified eyes already on her.

“Should’a probably warned you this could happen,” she sighed, rising to her feet.

Over her shoulder, Yaz watched as a cluster of untethered blue lights shimmered and converged, until they eventually began to form a more solid shape. Strange, it was starting to look a little like –

“Is that me?”

Sure enough, the projection of light formed first the outline and then the features of Yaz’s face and body. It was her. A perfect likeness; if a little translucent. To the side of her, far more out of focus, Graham and Ryan appeared. They looked even ghostlier than she. Something about the image was startlingly familiar, but she struggled to place it. Then a voice from behind had her jumping from her seat.

_“Proper goodbye?”_ it said.

Yaz spun on her heels and came face to face with the Doctor. Which was ridiculous, because the Doctor was also standing right beside her. Only, this latest one was forged from the same blue light as her own imitation and its voice came out staticky and quiet.

_“Thing is,”_ began Graham’s doppelganger. As he began to talk about grief, about needing time, Yaz realised what it was she was looking at.

“Wait, this is…”

“A memory,” finished the Doctor. “From the looks of it, it’s the day you lot decided to start travellin’ with me. Properly. Sorry, Yaz, I thought this might happen. We’re in the temporal index, after all. Memory core. She’s giving that neuron a test drive. Makin’ sure things are runnin’ smoothly.”

_“Yaz?”_ The Doctor’s holograph said her name and she turned _. “You wanted to come home?”_

_“Y’know, I love my family but they also drive me completely insane,”_ confessed Yaz’s likeness, and she knew the words that were about to follow by heart for how practiced they’d been. _“I want more. More of the universe; more time with you. You’re, like, the best person I’ve ever met.”_

It was odd, watching herself back like this. She could make out the infatuation scored onto her own face and almost pitied herself. That infatuation was going to swell and fester and become the most agonising lump in her throat; the haunter of her every dream and the bane of her bruised heart. Part of her wanted to shake the shoulders of her ghost and scream at her to lose the puppy-eyes, stub out whatever spark of hope she was foolishly nurturing, get a grip. This was the Doctor, she was looking at. _Don’t you know she can never love you back?_

And when the Doctor asked them to be sure, of course it was Yaz who chimed in first.

_“Sure,”_ she said with total conviction and the widest of smiles.

And when the Doctor asked them to pull that lever together, of course it was Yaz who stepped up first.

Her own holograph phased right through her body on its way to the Doctor, and she watched the four of them rest their hands on the lever. Or, where it would have been, if this were actually happening. The Doctor looked at Yaz with so much relief and so much hope in her eyes and Yaz remembered melting under that gaze. Together, they pulled the lever.

The holograph glitched, and then vanished entirely.

Blue became white once more.

“Right. One down.” The Doctor shot Yaz a tight-lipped smile. “Guess we’d better press on. Shall we take the slide down? Love a good slide.” The Doctor crossed the chamber and crouched down to a circular panel in the dome, the only thing that actually looked to be made of solid material and not neurons. After buzzing it with her sonic, the panel slid open to reveal an enclosed slide in the wall, which unfolded itself before their eyes.

Yaz, standing off to the side of her while the Doctor appeared to examine it for durability, shoved her hands in her pockets. “Feels like lifetimes ago, that day,” she mused.

“Back before I scared Graham and Ryan off,” said the Doctor, taking a pebble from her pocket and chucking it down the slide. She looked up at Yaz. “Never quite managed to scare you off though, eh? The unshakeable Yasmin Khan. C’mere.”

“It’s not that I don’t get scared, Doctor,” said Yaz, accepting the Doctor’s hand and letting her guide her to the top of the slide. She felt the Doctor’s hands on her hips and her heartbeat quadrupled. “It’s just that what I said that day still rings true. Even after everything we’ve seen, the things we’ve done – you’re still the best person I’ve ever met. I’d never give you up.”

With her back to the Doctor, Yaz couldn’t see her face, but her hold on Yaz’s waist tightened for just a second when she leaned in to whisper, “Then I’d better not give you reason to.” Before Yaz could think to turn and ask what she meant by that, the Doctor gave her a gentle shove, and she went hurtling towards the ground.

///

It took them another twenty minutes to locate the next loose neuron and find the corresponding transmitter. Again, Yaz was charged with pedal duty while the Doctor reattached the neuron to the wheel. This time, Yaz was prepared when the holographic memory came flickering to life around them.

Kind of.

Above their heads, another echo of she and the Doctor appeared. Their legs were dangling over the side of the TARDIS and their faces were awash in firelight. No, not firelight. Yaz recalled this moment.

_“You’re not gonna tell me you told me so?”_ asked Yaz.

It was just after they’d gone back to see Umbreen’s wedding; after they’d turned their backs on Prem and left him to his harrowing fate. After dropping Graham and Ryan off, Yaz had asked the Doctor to take her somewhere – anywhere – before she was due to return home and look her Nani in the eye. So, she took her to see a solar storm.

_“It wasn’t your fault, Yaz. I knew better than to take you back along your own personal timeline,”_ lamented the Doctor. _“I’m sorry. Y’should never have had to see that.”_

The real Doctor wasn’t watching the display; she’d instead crouched down by the transmitter and was currently scanning it with her sonic. Judging by the frown on her face, she was less than impressed. Yaz kept watching.

_“So, why did you? Take me, I mean?”_

_“Because you asked me to.”_

In the pause that followed, Yaz felt the gravity of that admission just as much as she had done when she first heard it. Yes, the Doctor had risked the fabric of time and space. Yes, she broke her own rules and went against her own steadfast code - but Yaz had asked her to. How was she ever going to refuse? At the time, she hadn’t thought to divine a second admission hidden between the lines of those five, matter-of-fact words. Now, knowing the Doctor better, she had to wonder. It took a lot to get the Doctor change her mind and it took even more for her to defy her own principles. Why had Yaz been the exception?

_“You’ve seen a lot of death, haven’t you?”_

_“I have.”_

_“How do you not let it get to you? How are you always so… happy? Hopeful.”_

At that, a shadow passed over the Doctor’s face that Yaz hadn’t seen the first time around. Something that suggested maybe Yaz was way off base, or perhaps alluded to a long history of the very opposite of such a character judgement. Without question, Yaz had seen evidence of this in their more recent past. Cracks in the happy-go-lucky façade. Paroxysms of rage. Despair. _“The trick is to just keep moving.”_

_“But what happens when you stop?”_

_“Why would I do a thing like that? There’s always more out there to see, Yaz. Whole galaxies to explore, planets to save, friends to make.”_ She nudged Yaz’s shoulder with her own. _“I keep goin’ for people like you.”_

Yaz didn’t look convinced. _“Surely, we’re just like a blip on your timeline, though. How old did you say you were again?”_

_“Oi, what you tryna say? Personally, I don’t think I look a day over eight hundred and fifty-six,”_ reckoned the Doctor. She looked sideways at Yaz, subtle enough not to have been spotted. Standing there watching now, Yaz saw something to the quiet way she regarded her that was impossible to name. Or, at least, impossible to believe. _“The lifespan of human beings is like mayflies to a Time Lord; it’s barely anythin’, you’re right. But it doesn’t feel that way at the time. When I’m with you – I mean, uh, all of you – it’s like time slows down a little bit. For a while, I’ve got a family. And I’m happy. And it doesn’t feel so…”_

The garnet glow on the Doctor’s face accentuated her frown lines; made her look sad and weary and as ancient as she was. It broke Yaz’s heart to see that by the time she turned her head, the Doctor had already blinked the awful expression away. In its stead was a hollow smile Yaz kicked herself for not seeing through the last time.

_“Wicked, solar storms, aren’t they?”_ enthused the Doctor, artfully diverting the course of the conversation in a manner most transparent with the added gift of hindsight. The Doctor pointed towards the stars (always, she was pointing towards the stars) and launched into a lengthy explanation about the cause, process, and aftermath of such cosmic events.

The holograph phased into nonexistence and the echo of the Doctor’s voice reverberated in its wake before that, too, faded entirely. Yaz remembered that they didn’t talk about much of substance after that. Before long, the Doctor had been rushing her back home. The moment pretty much ended up fading from memory. Her own, anyway. Clearly the TARDIS was not so prone to forgetting.

Yaz looked at the Doctor, who was fiddling absently with her sonic. “Was a tough day all round, that,” she commented.

“Yeah,” agreed Yaz.

“Er, listen, Yaz – I think I’ve probably got it from here if you wanna head back. Don’t wanna keep you, after all, and it’s quite a monotonous job, this one. You’ve been brilliant, though!” said the Doctor, buzzing the panel open.

As the slide built itself anew, Yaz shook her head. “I don’t mind helping. Besides, no offence, but your arms aren’t anywhere near long enough to man the pedal _and_ reattach the neuron.”

“Think you’ll find my arms to be perfectly proportionate to my body, thank you,” grumbled the Doctor. “It’s fine, Yaz. Really. I’ll figure it out. Now, down you pop.”

Yaz crossed her arms. “You tryna get rid of me?”

“Wh – no! ‘Course not,” denied the Doctor. “Never.”

“That’s kinda what it looks like,” argued Yaz.

The Doctor pursed her lips. “I just worry that the TARDIS is playin’ games with us, is all. She’s been in quite a rebellious mood, lately. Only a phase, I’m sure – kinda like that time I went through a bit of a midlife crisis and made the regrettable mistake of picking up an electric guitar,” she divulged with a cringe. “Can it be called a midlife crisis if you’re a theoretically eternal being? Probably should coin a new phrase, eh? Then again, seems a bit pointless since I always tend to be in the midst of one in a series of perpetual crises. Maybe – “

“Doctor,” interrupted Yaz. “What do you mean, she’s playing games?”

Throat bobbing, the Doctor’s eyes wavered over the doomed roof of the chamber. When they fell over Yaz once more, there was a sudden sobriety to them. “Two memories. Both pertainin’ to you and me. D’you have any idea how old this TARDIS is? How many things she’s seen? Not just things that have been, but things that will be or even could be. Infinite possible futures. The odds at her selecting these memories randomly are pretty astronomical, is all I’m sayin’.” 

Yaz glanced about the room, nervous. “You think she’s tryna make a point?”

Her mouth went dry at the prospect, because what point could she be trying to make specifically to do with the two of them? Yaz, telling the Doctor she’s the best person she’s ever met. The Doctor, admitting that Yaz is her family and that she’s part of the reason she keeps going; that having her around helps to stave off the grief and the loneliness. Maybe the TARDIS was taking issue with their co-dependency. Maybe she was as jealous of Yaz as Yaz sometimes was of her.

Maybe it was something else altogether.

The Doctor looked at Yaz. She blinked, and her grave expression desisted, giving way to a portrait of nonchalance. Convincing. One of her finer works. The Doctor was good at that, thought Yaz. At moulding her features to suit her and deflect further lines of questioning. “Nah, no way. Just havin’ her fun, I bet,” dismissed the Doctor. “C’mon then, Khan, if you insist on stayin’. Let’s try and get this done for tea time, shall we?”

///

_“I already told you, that were the last time,”_ huffed the Doctor. _“I can’t do it again.”_

The third memory differed from the others in that Yaz was nowhere to be seen. Instead, the Doctor was alone, lying on a creeper beneath the wiring of an exposed console panel. She was wearing a pair of ridiculous goggles, the sleeves of her jumper rolled up to her elbows, talking to the TARDIS.

_“I_ do _have my reasons, thank you very mu – what? They’re perfectly valid!”_ It sounded as if the Doctor was engaged in another of her endless rows with her ship. _“Oh, pfft, like you’re one to talk.”_

Beside Yaz, the non-holographic Doctor tensed. She fumbled for her sonic, opened the slide, and put her hand on Yaz’s back. “Yaz, let’s move on.” She tried to guide Yaz away, and Yaz almost let her. If this was a private memory then the last thing she wanted was to intrude. But then she heard her name, and they both went still.

_“Yaz isn’t like that, though. She’s not like River,”_ muttered the Doctor. _“River understood how things had to be; how they were gonna end. From day one, she knew.”_

“Yaz…” The Doctor looked at Yaz with pleading eyes.

Yaz stayed put.

_“I didn’t say that – I just meant…”_ Heaving a sigh, the Doctor rolled out from under the console and sat up, pulling her goggles down around her neck and wiping her forehead with her wrist. _“I just want her to be happy, old girl. That’s all I want. She’s – she’s all I have left. It’s just me and Yaz.”_ A pause. _“Yeah, yeah, and you. Always you.”_

Yaz gauged the real Doctor to find her glowering at the floor, fists clenched at her sides. The Doctor didn’t often get embarrassed – her ego was far too big for that – but at present she was refusing to meet Yaz’s eye and her cheeks had gone taffy pink. Then again, that could just as easily have been anger.

_“There’s no sense in messing this up, is what I’m sayin’. We’ve a good thing going. We’re – we’re friends.”_ The Doctor faltered over that last word like it left a burnt taste on her tongue. _“If I ruin this, what’ve I got? It’ll just be me and you on our Todd again – and I know you get lonely, too. I know you like havin’ her around as much as I do. S’let’s not give her any reason to run, yeah? She’s a good one, is Yasmin Khan.”_ She fiddled with a greasy rag in her hands, eyes vacant and sad. _“Really good.”_

The memory ended there.

Stony-faced, the Doctor stood to the side of the slide. “Down.”

“Doctor – “

“I said down,” she reiterated, her every syllable razor-sharp and cutting. Such a tone left little room for debate.

Yaz was first down the slide. When the Doctor emerged after her, the slide began to fold back in on itself and the Doctor took Yaz’s hand. She started to march along the luminous tunnels with Yaz in tow, picking up her pace to keep up with the Doctor’s long strides.

“I knew she were havin’ us on,” grouched the Doctor under her breath. “She did this to her bloody self, the daft…”

“Wait, who’s River?” Yaz dared to ask, though she had a feeling the name carried a lot of weight and that speaking it might well bring about similarly heavy consequences she wasn’t prepared to handle.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re leaving.” The Doctor glared at the webbed roof of the tunnel. “This joke wasn’t funny the first time around, mate. Come on, Yaz. Stay close.”

Hand clamped firmly in the Doctor’s, Yaz was left with little choice but to scamper after her. Her mind was still reeling with what she’d seen, replaying the Doctor’s conversation with the TARDIS over and over again. The way her voice caught on the word _friends,_ her baseless fear that Yaz might leave her on her own again; the downright heartrending slip of the mask she clearly only ever donned for the sake of others. The TARDIS was trying to say something, and Yaz was so close to translating.

They weaved through the tunnels for the better part of ten minutes, and even though it mostly all looked the same to Yaz, even she could tell after a while that they were going around in circles.

“The door should be right here!” exclaimed the Doctor, furious, gesturing towards yet another junction in the pathway. She looked around. “I’ll come back to finish the repairs, all right? Promise. I just – I need to get Yaz back. Honestly, what is your _problem_ , today?” She let go of Yaz’s hand in favour of smacking the side of the cerebral anomaly detector; a faithful human variant on the art of fixing things.

Yaz slipped her hands into her back pockets, watching the Doctor with a tilted head. She’d hardly looked at her since that last chamber. “I think maybe I know what the TARDIS is tryna say.”

“No offence, Yaz, but even I have a hard time understanding her at the best of times,” retorted the Doctor, fiddling with the miniature satellite dish. “Somehow, I doubt you’d have better luck.”

“Ouch.”

The Doctor lifted her head. Guilt found purchase on the incline of her brow. “Sorry, that were a bit harsh,” she mumbled. “But she – she’s interfering. She knows not to do that. Dunno how many times I’ve had to tell her.”

“Don’t take it out on me; I’ve got nowt to do with this,” argued Yaz.

“I know, Yaz. I’m sorry.”

Yaz rolled her eyes. “Why don’t we just finish the repairs and maybe she’ll let us leave. How many we got left?” she asked, nodding at the device.

“Um, just the one, I think. But…” The Doctor hesitated, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. Yaz could only speculate that she was running through a mental recall of the many memories she would be loathe for Yaz to witness without her consent. While she understood that, she also really wanted to just get it over with so they could leave. The Doctor’s mood was fast turning dour and Yaz didn’t like to be around her when she got like this. “Oh, fine. Guess we don’t have much of a choice in the matter, do we?”

This time, she didn’t take Yaz’s hand. Rather, the Doctor turned and set off without warning, and merely trusted that Yaz was right behind her. That’s where she could usually be found, after all. Five minutes of silence – each sixty seconds another lifetime – stretched on endlessly in the tunnels. Only their own footsteps and the whispers of ghosts accompanied them. When the silence became too burdensome to bear, Yaz made an effort to shake it from their backs.

“I am happy, y’know?” she said.

The Doctor, directly ahead, stopped at a forked pathway. Mumbling to herself, she consulted the device at hand and then pressed on to the left without indulging Yaz with so much as an acknowledgement that she’d been heard.

“Are you listenin’, Doctor? I’m happy,” repeated Yaz, more forceful this time. “I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, when I’m with you. You don’t need to worry about that – or about me.”

Looking over her shoulder, the Doctor flashed Yaz a brief smile that didn’t reach the eyes. Still, she said nothing.

Yaz tried a different approach. “Is River someone you lost?”

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“You avoid a lot of questions.”

“Maybe I have good reason to.”

“Maybe you just think you do.”

“Oh, for – “ The Doctor whirled around so abruptly that Yaz flinched. Her knee-jerk reaction stopped the Doctor short, the fury emblazoned onto her face capitulating to exasperation; to a tiredness bred not from lack of sleep. She dragged a hand down her face. “River Song was my wife. I loved her. I lost her. It was complicated and wonderful and messy and the first day I met her, she died.”

Yaz blinked. “You were married?”

“Sort of,” said the Doctor, non-committal. “As I said, it’s complicated.”

“So…” Yaz was struggling to process this; it was more personal information than she usually managed to weasel out of the Doctor over the course of months. “So, why – what do I have to do with your wife?”

The Doctor laughed mirthlessly. “Nothing, Yaz. You’ve nothin’ in common with River except the misfortune of knowing me.” If she’d been trying to make a joke, it didn’t land. And anyway, it came across as far too sincere to be considered remotely funny.

“But the TARDIS – “

“Doesn’t know what she’s on about. She’s throwing a tantrum; attention seeking. It’s just somethin’ she does every century or so. Best to ignore her when she gets like this, believe me.”

The whispers in the tunnels picked up like a soft zephyr yielding to the first winds of an oncoming storm. For the first time, Yaz thought she could make out the faintest voice on the current. She turned her head to the side, listening. Whatever it was, it almost sounded like a taunt. Like a dare.

The Doctor frowned at her. “Yaz, what is it?”

“I think I can hear… something.” It was a hair’s breadth from coherence. If only she focused, if only she listened closer, perhaps it would emerge from the fog of ambiguity.

The Doctor had gone pale. She was looking directly at a spot over Yaz’s shoulder – like she could see something. Only, when Yaz turned, there was nothing there but the path from which they had come. “Just keep your glasses on, yeah?” advised the Doctor.

“My – what do the glasses have to do with what I can hear?”

“Just keep ‘em on, Yaz,” snapped the Doctor.

Frowning, Yaz touched the round rim of her glasses tentatively. The way the Doctor’s muscles went rigid at the movement was not lost on her. “That Artron energy spiel were a load of rubbish, weren’t it? What are the glasses really for?”

The Doctor’s pupils flitted between Yaz and that empty space over her shoulder like she couldn’t decide where to look. Yaz couldn’t be sure if it was the Doctor’s troubled expression or something else entirely that was causing the small hairs on the back of her neck to stand to attention. She turned once more towards the tunnel, fingers hovering over the hinges of her glasses.

“Wait, Yaz – “

Risking permanent blindness and - infinitely more terrifying - the Doctor’s rage, Yaz removed her glasses. The instant she lifted the lenses from her eyes and unhooked the temples from her ears, she gasped. She stumbled backwards, only to feel the Doctor’s hand on her shoulder.

Inches from them, stood a ghost.

A woman.

She was pretty, Yaz noticed. _For a ghost_. But she was pretty in an intimidating sort of way; the trace of a clever smile dancing dangerously on her upturned lips. Thick locks of sandy hair fell about her shoulders, and her translucent eyes held more life in them than any ghost ought to have. Life, and laughter, and fear, and thrill. Love. She gazed past Yaz, towards the Doctor, and Yaz saw love.

_“Hello, sweetie,”_ she purred.

The Doctor’s hand fell away from Yaz’s shoulder. “Always were too clever for your own good, Khan,” muttered the Doctor. “Neural Inhibitors. That’s what the glasses are.”

Yaz looked up at the Doctor. She was still donning her glasses, and yet Yaz could tell she could see the apparition before them clear as day. “Why aren’t yours working?”

“Oh, these are just a regular old pair of glasses. Only had the one inhibitor, unfortunately,” admitted the Doctor, slipping the glasses off her face and folding them into her pocket. No sense in pretending anymore. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from the ghost. “Yaz, meet River Song.”

River glitched like the picture in an old movie. _“Hello, sweetie,”_ she repeated.

“Correction – the memory of River Song. She’s not here, she can’t hear us. It’s just a fabrication, like all the rest.” She glanced around, afraid. Was she expecting more visitors? “There’s a good reason I don’t come down ‘ere often. And there’s a good reason I gave you those specs.”

Swallowing tightly, Yaz took a step closer to River. When River’s eyes slid from the Doctor and landed on her, she started. “Can she see us?”

“It’s only an illusion. If you’d just put your glasses back on – “

_“When you love the Doctor,”_ River began, eyes still fixed on Yaz, _“It’s like loving the stars themselves.”_

Yaz stiffened. It was impossible not to feel seen, to feel caught, by those piercing holographic eyes. She dared not brave the Doctor’s reaction for fear of her own face betraying the truth of River’s accusation. It was just a construct, after all – a projection of light and distorted memory and snippets of conversation plucked without context from the scattered moments of her life. How was she to know? Surely, it was impossible.

Her eyes found the Doctor’s again. _“Happy ever after doesn’t mean forever – forever – forever – “_ The word kept repeating; a needle caught on a record. Behind her, the Doctor released a quivering breath. Yaz looked up at her. Her eyes were glossy with a sheen of tears she was trying furiously to blink away and Yaz felt her heart bend and snap like a twig. The Doctor didn’t cry. Yaz felt enormously, stupidly selfish all of a sudden.

_“It just means time,”_ River went on.

“Put your glasses back on,” croaked the Doctor.

_“A little time.”_

“Put them on!” The Doctor snatched the glasses out of Yaz’s hands and slotted them back onto her face.

River vanished, and the nebulous whispering returned. Breathing heavily, the Doctor turned away from Yaz, smacking the side of the device and muttering under her breath about interference and malfunctions and actively _not_ addressing what had just happened, or the lone tear tracking the soft flesh of her cheek.

“I’m sorry, Doctor,” whispered Yaz. “I didn’t think – “

“No, you didn’t think,” the Doctor reviled, the sharp edges of the remark sinking into Yaz’s chest like teeth. If her intention was to maul, it was working. Seeing the Doctor like this tore Yaz to ribbons.

She had a million questions about River: what happened to her? Where was she? How long had it been? She buried them all beneath her tongue, and so her mouth became a final resting place for the bones of words best left unspoken. Besides, Yaz didn’t think any of that had really been about River. This was the TARDIS’ design, and the blueprints of it were fast unfurling before her very eyes.

Timid, Yaz stepped into view of the Doctor and placed a compassionate hand on her sleeve. “Is it true, what you said? That I’m all you have left?”

Without looking up from the cerebral anomaly detector, the Doctor clenched her jaw. Still, she didn’t pull away. That was something. Yaz wrapped her hand loosely around the Doctor’s wrist and tugged lightly, prompting the Doctor to let go of the device and allow Yaz’s hand to slip into her palm. She ran her thumb across the Doctor’s knuckles.

“I wish that weren’t the case, Doctor. You deserve – well, you deserve the universe. But, more than that, you deserve to be loved.” They each stared at their joined hands. They really were a perfect fit - and wasn’t that the saddest thing in the universe? “Only, sometimes I worry you run away from it.”

The Doctor’s lips parted as if to respond, but rather than the Doctor’s voice, all Yaz heard in response to her supposition was a shrill beeping sound emanating from the anomaly detector. The satellite was swivelling rapidly and the radar was flashing red.

The Doctor pulled her hand away and Yaz’s heart sank heavy as a stone. “Back in business,” she announced. “Let’s get movin’, shall we?”

///

Final neuron tied to her finger, Yaz followed the Doctor sullenly to the last transmitter. This time, however, there was no ladder to climb or platform to find. Instead, they ended up following the tunnels to a large opening; the alleged centre of the intricate maze.

The nexus of the temporal index was another domed chamber, except this time it spanned hundreds of feet and the lofty, arched canopy was supported by a thick branch of neurons that somewhat resembled the stem of a brain. Upon closer inspection, Yaz saw that it wasn’t a stem but another of the spindle-like protuberances wrapped tightly in neuronic filaments, only on a much larger scale.

“How we meant to do this one, then?” wondered Yaz, not seeing a transmitter within the vicinity.

The Doctor picked the neuron from Yaz’s finger. “This one didn’t come loose – it snapped. Look,” said the Doctor, holding the frayed end of the neuron up for Yaz to see. “See the jagged end, here? We just have to find the other end. Reattach ‘em. It’ll mend itself once the pieces are reunited. Keep your eyes peeled for another dull neuron, yeah?”

Together, they approached the spindle in the centre of the chamber and began to examine every individual fibril coiled around it, starting at opposite sides and rounding towards one another. It was Yaz who first spotted it hanging loose above their heads. The neuron was too far up for either of them to reach on their own, so Yaz was forced to crouch down and let the Doctor climb up onto her shoulders. Her skin was steeped in warmth when she felt the Doctor’s thighs brush against her ears. Fortunately, she seemed to be too occupied with mending the neuron to notice.

The Doctor held the ends of the neuron together like stripped wire. After a few failed attempts at sparking friction and prompting the healing process, the pieces began to extend towards one another of their own volition. They coiled around one another like snakes, jagged pieces slotting together, and when all the gaps were closed the neuron sprang back against the spindle and glowed first hot white and then – right on cue – blue.

As the dome flooded with a vivid blue, pre-dusk light and a brand new scene flickered to life around them, the Doctor slid off Yaz’s back. Apparently resigned to her fate, she didn’t bother trying to drag Yaz away from the mirage this time.

This particular memory had a wider visual scope than the previous three. Yaz watched as the walls transformed into towering book shelves of dark wood; more springing up in the empty space around them. Every inch of the shelves was occupied by old, leather bound volumes and cracked spines and dog-eared first editions. Either Yaz was losing her mind, or she could actually smell the dusty perfume those old pages secreted.

Yaz recognised this scenery; recognised the particular carvings and embellishments in the wood. It was the TARDIS’ fifth library – by far her favourite. The fluid light from a fireplace burning in some corner unseen cast fickle shadows across the shelves. The last apparition to materialise was Yaz.

She was perusing the shelves, dressed for comfort in a grey hoodie and plaid shorts. The Doctor’s connection to her TARDIS was strongest in the console room, but Yaz always felt her presence most in the library. She was often being drawn, guided by some invisible hand, towards books she ended up loving; the fireplace would light itself upon her arrival and the temperature was always perfect for her. She’d never discussed with the Doctor. Not for any good reason – she just kind of liked that she had this secret bond with the TARDIS that was all hers.

At first, Yaz couldn’t recall the specifics of the scene unfolding before them. Not until she watched herself look up and say, _“Can you – d’you think you can show me one of the ones like last time?”_ She asked the question shyly, tugging at the strings of her hoodie. _“I mean, it doesn’t have to be that genre or anythin’, but, well, there were this writing on the margins. It were hers, right? The Doctor’s?’_

Yaz remembered her delight upon cracking open an obviously much-loved book and finding manic handwriting scrawled on every inch of the paper in gelled ink. The annotations (and corrections and doodles and even jokes) had been far more entertaining than the book itself. The Doctor’s keen voice had sounded clear as a bell in her head. She’d read the thing cover to cover in one sitting, and then again just for the hell of it, committing the Doctor’s haphazard exegesis to memory. For a while, Yaz had been able to view things through the Doctor’s kaleidoscopic lens – and what a ride that had been.

She wandered down the aisle, trailing her fingertips across the spines she passed. _“I know it’s probably a bit of a weird ask but – I mean, you know the Doctor. She doesn’t let us get much of a look in, otherwise.”_ Yaz shrugged. _“I dunno. It were just nice, seeing her thoughts like that. Written right there on the page. S’pose with you being telepathic, you’ve a better idea than I do at what’s going on with her half the time, don’t you?”_

When the firelight in the room intensified and the shadows leapt marginally higher, Yaz looked up. She emerged from the shelves to investigate, and so materialised a fireplace and two leather armchairs. Yaz stopped in front of the small table dividing them, upon which lay a book she hadn’t noticed before.

With careful hands, she picked the book up and began to flick through it. Sure enough, the book had been littered with more of the Doctor’s insights – there were even a couple of gold star stickers stuck to the pages Yaz assumed she liked best. Smiling, she ran her thumb over one of them, casting her mind back to the many times she herself had been awarded gold stars and arbitrary points nobody ever kept track of.

_“Hiya, Yaz!”_

Yaz jumped and spun around to find the Doctor approaching from amidst the shelves. Missing her typical getup, she was instead donning an oversized jumper and pyjama bottoms with little planet doodles on them. Yaz had bought them for her when she began to seriously doubt that she ever actually changed out of her culottes and layered shirts. Recycling outfits she could excuse, but the idea that the Doctor slept in the same clothes she wore day in and day out made her skin itch – despite her insistence that they were self-cleaning.

_“Thought I might find you ‘ere. Looking for a bit of an escape, are we?”_ The Doctor’s gaze landed on the book in Yaz’s hands and her smile wavered. _“Hm. Thought I left that in my room.”_

_“Oh, um, it were just sitting here,”_ said Yaz, electing not to mention the request she’d made or the TARDIS’ complicity.

_“That so?”_ hummed the Doctor, trace amounts of humour softening the edges of her eyes when they flickered briefly upwards _. “It’s a tragedy, y’know? Didn’t really have you pegged as a tragedy kinda girl, Yaz.”_

_“Well,”_ Yaz began, tucking the book under her arm, _“Allow me to surprise you.”_

_“You always do.”_

As their holographs experienced what could only be described as a charged moment of unbroken eye contact and sentiments left unsaid, the real Doctor and Yaz made the mistake of glancing at one another at the same time. Swiftly, they both turned away.

_“You’ll cry your eyes out as those last few pages,”_ warned the Doctor.

_“Is the story worth it?”_

_“A good story’s always worth the tears.”_

_“Then I don’t mind a tragic ending.”_

_“Brave girl.”_

_“You know me.”_

_The Doctor smiled. “I do.”_

Yaz tucked her hair behind her ear, something she sometimes did when she was anxious. _“So, you were looking for me?”_

_“Oh, yeah, um – I just thought y’might be after some company but I can see you’ve got your hands full,”_ said the Doctor. She buried her hands in the pockets of her trousers (Yaz had made certain to find her a pair of pyjamas with pockets or the Doctor was unlikely to ever have worn them).

Yaz had an inkling that this was the Doctor’s way of admitting that she herself was in need of some company. _“Actually, I’d love some.”_

_“But – your book?”_

_“Maybe you can read it to me?”_

_“Depends.”_ The Doctor grinned _. “Am I allowed to do the voices all silly?”_

_“Thought it were supposed to be sad?”_

_“Sure, it’s_ supposed _to be. Doesn’t mean y’can’t try and find a way to smile about it, eh?”_

_“Words to live by,”_ laughed Yaz, and the Doctor’s eyes twinkled. _“Right, fine. You can do the voices all silly.”_

_“Brilliant choice!”_ The Doctor held out her hand and Yaz passed her the book. _“Come on, Khan. I know the perfect little spot.”_

The Doctor led Yaz through the library to a wooden ladder, which they climbed up to a treehouse-esque reading nook hovering over the shelves. It had a padded floor, blankets, pillows, and warm orange string lights hanging around the window frames. Once they got settled, the Doctor began to read a soul-rending tragedy in a series of silly voices and Yaz didn’t know whether to be laughing or crying or none of the above when the Doctor slung her arm around her and encouraged her to settle against her shoulder.

That was where Yaz’s own recollection of day ended, because soon she was falling asleep in the arms of the Doctor. The TARDIS’ memory, however, was not complete. The scene glitched, and by the time the image solidified again, it was evident that time had passed. The Doctor was reading a different passage and her voice had grown sombre. She kept going until the end of the chapter.

_“… Because of all the strange, beautiful, heartbreaking people in this strange, beautiful, heartbreaking world, I choose her,”_ she read, looking down at Yaz when she whispered the next part. _“I will always choose you, Yasmin Khan.”_

She pressed a kiss to her fingers, and then pressed her fingers to the faint scar on Yaz’s forehead.

The scene melted away.

Standing right where her holograph had been was the Doctor. She’d gone uncharacteristically still, as if afraid any sudden movements might draw unwanted attention. Yaz remarked that she looked frightened, almost. Scared of the truth or of Yaz’s reaction to it. Whatever anger the Doctor was holding on to had been released in favour of raw vulnerability and Yaz was overcome with the urge to wrap her arms around her and tell her it was okay. More than okay. She didn’t do that.

In part, this was because she was just as in shock by what they’d been shown. Because it was proof, wasn’t it? Proof of what she’d been searching for in every lingering gaze and innocuous touch and butter-melting smile. Proof of a fact that she’d long suspected but never once allowed herself to believe.

_I will always choose you, Yasmin Khan._

The words haunted the room and Yaz’s heart ripped itself asunder.

She took a step forward and the Doctor took one back, eyes falling to the floor. “Doctor,” Yaz said softly, “Look at me.”

“Told you the TARDIS were playin’ silly beggar,” she mumbled. “I really must do somethin’ about – “

“Please, Doctor.”

Begrudging, the Doctor dragged her heavy eyes up off the floor and fixed them on Yaz.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” asked Yaz.

“Tell you what?”

Rather than patronise her by spelling out the obvious, Yaz waited patiently for the Doctor to decide to stop playing dumb of her own will. She was far too clever for that - and much too old for games. After a moment, the Doctor’s shoulders slumped. She pitched a wary sigh. “I wanted to,” she revealed quietly. “There were so many times – it’s not – it’s not easy for me. None of this is easy for me.”

“I think you make it harder on yourself than it has to be.” This time, when Yaz stepped into her space, the Doctor didn’t step away. She lifted a trembling hand to the Doctor’s cheek. Though she looked pained at the sudden contact, the Doctor leaned into Yaz’s palm. “You’re always holding back. You’re always denying yourself so much. Why?”

“I don’t – I’m not denying myself anythin’,” refuted the Doctor. “It’s just that I can manage, Yaz. I can manage on my own. And actually, it’s better if I do.”

She pulled away, rounding the spindle in much the same way as she would sometimes round the console in an effort to hide her face and create distance, and Yaz’s hand fell to her side. She flexed the muscles in her jaw. Not this time. This time, she was taking a wrecking ball to those walls or else she’d dislodge every stubborn stone by hand.

“It must be a big, lonely universe,” speculated Yaz, following the Doctor.

“Ah, I’m never on me own when I’m out there,” the Doctor said, hands clasped behind her back and eyes on the canopy. Eyes anywhere but on Yaz.

Yaz sighed. Why’d she have to go and fall in love with someone so terrified by it? “I’m not talking about the one through those doors, Doctor. I’m talking about the one standing right in front of me.”

At that, the Doctor turned to Yaz. Something gave behind hazel-golds; light pouring out through cracks and fissures that splintered further the more Yaz spoke.

She pressed on, emboldened by the Doctor’s reaction. “Isn’t it better to share it with someone?”

“But I do.”

“Do you? Really?” demanded Yaz, unconvinced.

They stared off with one another for a beat, tensions flared and the percussive cadence of Yaz’s pulse deafening in her ears. Everything she ever wanted was within reach. The _Doctor_ was within reach - she was sure of it. If only she could figure out the right words to say to close the boundless gap between them.

“Maybe we _are_ all like mayflies to you,” conceded Yaz. “Maybe you don’t need me – “

“I didn’t say – “

“But I need you,” insisted Yaz, finding it hard to care how desperate she sounded, “I need you, Doctor - and when you ice me out, it makes me feel so lonely. I _hate_ feeling like that. I hate it.”

The Doctor’s face fell. If breaking hearts made a sound, hers would no doubt have ripped like thunder. “That’s the last thing I ever wanted, Yaz, y’have to know that,” she pleaded.

“So, then do something about it,” Yaz challenged. “Look around you, Doctor. Look at what it took for us to have this conversation. It shouldn’t be on your TARDIS to get us to be honest with one another, and it shouldn’t be this bloody difficult for you to talk to me. I’m here. I’m always right here. Waiting.”

When the Doctor stepped towards her, Yaz felt her conviction get caught in her throat like paste and the muscles of her neck constricted in an effort to choke it back down.

“There’s only one way somethin’ like this ends,” the Doctor cautioned, centimetres from Yaz. “You know that, don’t you?”

“A good story is always worth the tears,” Yaz countered, albeit in a weaker voice. “The best person I know told me that.”

Yeah, maybe theirs was to be a tragedy - but it was also a love story. Just because the final chapter was sad, that didn’t mean they couldn’t laugh and smile and love their way through the rest of the book. It didn’t mean they couldn’t colour one another’s pages in their own adoring handwriting; leave their marks like gold stickers and glittering ink.

The Doctor’s face softened, overlaid with sadness though it still was. “Sounds like a wise woman.”

“She can be,” agreed Yaz. “She can also be incredibly daft and infuriatingly stubborn.”

“Dunno why you put up with her.”

“You put up with a lot from the people you love,” Yaz said, voice weighed down by the hefty confession it carried. She searched the Doctor. On the off chance she’d missed it, Yaz repeated the admission. “I do love you, Doctor.”

Assuaging the all-entombing fear Yaz had always housed at uttering such words out loud, the Doctor smiled. Those fissures in the Doctor’s self-made barriers had become gaping holes, and now the honeyed rays streaming through her irises were blinding. “You wouldn’t mind me holdin’ on to those words for a little bit, would you?”

“They’re all yours,” breathed Yaz. “Just give ‘em back when you’re ready, yeah?”

There was no rush. This was something Yaz knew the Doctor would say in her own time, when she at last came to terms with the acceptance of her own feelings. The Doctor had spent so long running from this, it was only right to lend her the time to catch her breath now that she’d finally stopped. Or, at least, slowed down.

“I promise,” vowed the Doctor. She wrapped a hand loosely around Yaz’s neck, her thumb coming to rest on the smooth skin of her cheek. There was no way, thought Yaz, that she couldn’t feel her heart drumming up its rapid, furious rhythm. Graciously, she elected not to address it. The Doctor wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue, and Yaz realised with a nigh lethal shock to her core that she was watching Yaz’s mouth. “Do you, uh, would you mind if – if I – god, look at me. I’m a stammerin’ mess.”

Yaz’s laugh came out strained; nervous. “I tend to have that effect.”

“Oh, I believe it.” The Doctor swallowed and Yaz followed the bump of her throat. “Yaz, can I kiss you?”

She’d been expecting it, of course, but that didn’t lessen the effect the Doctor’s self-conscious request had on Yaz’s shaking hands or searing cheeks. “I’ll be gutted if you don’t,” she managed to say.

The Doctor leaned in slowly, her lips stopping just short of Yaz’s. “Close your eyes,” she whispered. The words fluttered like a warm breeze against her skin. When Yaz obeyed, she felt the Doctor lift her glasses up onto her head.

Next thing, the Doctor was kissing Yaz.

Yaz felt cool lips against her own, softer than they had any right to be. The kiss was, to begin with, a tentative creature. Their mouths moved uncertainly against one another, each exploring uncharted territory with heads full of complicated histories and messy futures. But then Yaz took the Doctor by her waist, and the Doctor’s lips parted for Yaz’s tongue, and their heads went quiet. Following a soft moan neither had enough sense to claim, the kiss began in earnest.

With eyes closed, they weren’t privy to the brilliant explosion of colour which ignited upon the meeting of tongues. It began at the base of the spindle and coursed like an electrical current up through each filament, rippling along the branches of the canopy and drenching the skin of the two lovers it concealed in harlequin hues.

And so they kissed in screaming technicolour.

Yaz didn’t need to open her eyes to know that; to know that she’d been living her whole life in dreary sepia tones until then. She only needed to feel the Doctor’s fingers at the nape of her neck, her tongue slipping past her teeth, her almost inaudible gasp when Yaz deepened the kiss. These were all the colours she never knew existed.

Breathless, they pulled apart. Their noses remained nestled side by side. “Who knew your TARDIS made such a good wingman?” joked Yaz, arms locked around the Doctor’s waist.

“Oh, don’t tell her that, you’ll only feed her ego,” the Doctor said, but she was sporting a smile wider than Yaz had had the good fortune of witnessing in a long time. “Still, I reckon I may owe her a bit of an apology, ‘cause that kiss was…” She blew out her cheeks. “Woah.”

Around them, the TARDIS burbled in a manner uninterpretable to all save the Doctor, who gave a chiding but affectionate eyeroll in response. “Cheeky,” she said.

“What did she say?” asked Yaz.

“She said,” began the Doctor, hands slipping from her neck to the grasp at the lapels of her jacket, “Why stop there?”

“She’s got a point.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

When their lips found one another once more (as, it seemed, they had forever been fated to do), the Doctor’s beloved ship looked courteously away and allowed them this sliver of privacy. She turned outwards towards the universe; the immense, glittering nebula in which she drifted. Though it was instantly swallowed up by the cavernous vacuum of space, the TARDIS beeped her content and thought not of mayflies or tragic endings, but of three hearts beating in sublime harmony, two irregular pulses joined at the mouth; love in a single instant. Echoing and endless.

One day, a memory - but for now?

For now, Yaz and the Doctor reinvented colour, scribbled without care on one another’s margins, and denied the universe every agony she one day would come to claim.

This was not a love story.

Nor was it a tragedy.

It was merely a kiss, pressed between the pages of time and space.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr: freefallthirteen


End file.
